• Thu, 1 Dec 2022, 08:10
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    Michael Lawson profile image
    Michael Lawson

 

The founding members—Heléna Star, NIKS, Hannah Shogbola and Jaguar—were instrumental in introducing a dance music category to the MOBO Awards.

bema resident advisor my house radio

Black Electronic Music Association (BEMA) is a new UK collective dedicated to highlighting electronic music’s Black roots.

Officially launching in 2023, BEMA was founded by Foundation FM affiliate Heléna Star, Black Artist Database cofounder NIKS, Hannah Shogbola, founder of creative consultancy DAJU, and BBC Radio 1 DJ Jaguar.

The four of them decided to start BEMA after working together to introduce a Best Electronic/Dance Act category at this year’s MOBO Awards, which took place last night, November 30th, at London’s Wembley Arena. (Nia Archives won the award.)

“As a collective, we’d been actively working on this for over two years and needed an umbrella for our work and for our future projects,” BEMA said. “With this, BEMA was born.”

They added: “We hope that by reintroducing a genre so close to our hearts, a better understanding from the Black community as to its genesis among Black and queer communities is fully understood. And that moving forward, an acceptance and inclusion of this genre is normalised.”

Looking further ahead, BEMA aims to become “a community support network” for Black artists and the long-term goal is to launch a new, independent Black electronic dance awards. The collective also stressed its desire to continue expanding.

“We want to allow people to get involved in a variety of ways—from nurturing and developing artists to becoming a part of our committee and taking part in our initiatives and events,” they said. “More information can be found on our website.” Here’s the Instagram post unveiling BEMA.